English summary: Ruyer argued that metaphysics spanned the spaces or gaps of knowledge that escaped from scientific teaching. Attentive to the latest scientific advancements, Ruyer produced a monism that placed a finalism attached to existing forms at the center of the universe, creating an original philosophical theology. After a brief biography, this book presents Ruyers work and thought, his principal texts in which he emerges as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. French description: Il y deux (...) manieres de se convaincre qu'on peut retirer une connaissance profonde de l'etude des sciences de la nature. Ou l'on croit que les sciences decrivent avec exactitude l'univers (et l'homme lui-meme). Ou l'on tient avec Ruyer qu'en suivant mot a mot, et pas a pas, les enseignements des sciences, on enjambe des espaces de connaissance qui leur echappent et qui sont l'objet de la metaphysique. Attentif aux dernieres avancees du savoir, Ruyer decouvre la possibilite de retourner le materialisme et de produire un monisme qui place au centre de l'univers, non plus la matiere, mais le finalisme attache aux formes existantes. Cette metaphysique qui est exposee notamment dans le Neo-finalisme, rejette le dualisme, se passe du sujet cartesien et aboutit a une theologie originale. Apres une breve biographie de Ruyer, le present ouvrage etudie les constantes et les evolutions de sa pensee, puis analyse ses oeuvres principales, ou l'on reconnaitra sans peine un des penseurs majeurs du XXe siecle. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects sense of identity. While the ability to have a coherent vision of the self relies partly on its reciprocal relationships with autobiographical memories, little is known about how memories ground “self-images” in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls were asked to give six autobiographical memories related to four self-statements they considered essential for defining their identity. Results showed that patients’ self-images were more passive than those of controls. Autobiographical memories underlying (...) self-images were less thematically linked to these self-images in patients. We also found evidence of a weakened sense of self and a deficient organization of autobiographical memories grounding the self in schizophrenia. These abnormalities may account for the poor cohesiveness of the self in schizophrenia. (shrink)

The dynamics of the "Etang de Berre", a brackish lagoon situated close to the French Mediterranean sea coast, is strongly disturbed by freshwater inputs coming from an hydroelectric power station. The system dynamics has been described as a sequence of daily typical states from a set of physicochemical variables such as temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen rates collected over three years by an automatic sampling station. Each daily pattern summarizes the evolution, hour by hour of the physicochemical variables. This article (...) presents results of forecasts of the states of the system subjected to the simultaneous effects of meteorological conditions and freshwater releases. We recall the main step of the classification tree method used to build up the predictive model (Classification and Regression Trees, Breiman et al., 1984) and we propose a transfer procedure in order to test the stability of the model. Results obtained on the Etang de Berre data set allow us to describe and predict the effects of the environmental variables on the system dynamics with a margin of error. The transfer procedure applied after the tree building process gives a maximum gain in prediction accuracy of about 15%. (shrink)

Si un philosophe a fondé son oeuvre sur la conscience historique, c'est bien Raymond Aron. Le rapprochement entre Aron et la post-modernité pourrait surprendre. Il en va tout autrement si l'on considère la conception historique de la post-modernité : celle-ci suit logiquement les Temps Modernes. Elle comprend alors les deux siècles de tensions idéologiques qui ont suivi 1789, jusqu'à la chute du mur de Berlin. Raymond Aron a commenté et pensé les convulsions apocalyptiques du dernier siècle post-moderne. D'où l'idée de (...) le considérer sous plusieurs angles : face au basculement du monde, la critique des idéologies (D. Steinmetz-Jenkins), la théorie des relations internationales (O. Rosenboim), son jugement sur la "tragédie algérienne" (O. Dard). Mais Aron est aussi sensible aux permanences, à ce qui ne bascule pas : c'est un penseur de la nation et des identités régionales, qui s'interroge sur sa propre judéité (G. De Ligio). La philosophie d'Aron, où l'historien est créateur et incarné, présente une analogie avec la théologie chrétienne : Pierre Manent décrit la relation d'Aron au christianisme. Enfin, Aron reste un intellectuel tout engagé dans la défense de la liberté, ce qu'explorent deux contributions : sur ce qu'il doit au libéralisme d'Edmund Burke (M. Oppermann), et sur sa recherche d'une stratégie modérée chez l'historien Hans Delbrück (J. Mouric). Encadrées par l'introduction de Fabrice Bouthillon et la conclusion de Pascal David, ces études esquissent les traits d'une pensée subtile : sceptique contre le dogmatisme des idéologies totalitaires, mais non relativiste, attachée à l'historicité, sans tomber dans le déterminisme historique. Ce volume est issu de la journée d'études du 18 novembre 2014 à l'Université de Bretagne occidentale à Brest."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Les débats qui se développent autour de la question du libre accès sont bien souvent menés comme des combats idéologiques, mobilisant des registres d’expression militants autour des notions de biens publics. La très grande visibilité de ces débats occulte deux éléments qui pourraient en relativiser la portée. L’analyse du développement des initiatives de libre accès montre que la dimension politique de la question est loin d’être prédominante dans toutes les disciplines et varie considérablement selon les communautés. Par ailleurs, les modifications (...) profondes que le développement des réseaux numériques entraîne dans les pratiques de communication scientifique pourraient rendre moins pertinente l’approche volontariste et militante du libre accès. La multiplication du nombre de documents disponibles, l’effacement relatif des frontières entre les différents modes de publication, l’abaissement des barrières d’accès à la publication contribuent à relativiser la portée des dispositifs de fabrication de rareté artificielle et à soumettre progressivement le système de communication scientifique à un régime d’économie de l’attention. Il est dès lors possible que le secteur de l’édition scientifique connaisse une évolution comparable à celle des secteurs de la presse et de l’édition musicale.Much of the current debate on the open access issue has been akin to ideological warfare, using militant language registers around the concept of public common goods. The high level of visibility of the debate masks two important points that could change perceptions on its real impact. Our analysis of the development of open access initiatives shows that the political dimension of the issue is by no means predominant in all disciplines and varies considerably among different communities. Furthermore, the profound changes in scientific communication practices brought about by the expansion of digital networks could lessen the relevance of the militant approach to open access. The proliferation of documents, the relative blurring of boundaries between different forms of publishing and the fact that barriers to access to publications are being lowered are lessening the perceived influence of systems that artificially manufacture rarity, and the scientific communication system is gradually being forced to conform to the attention economics. This makes it possible to anticipate changes in scientific publishing comparable to those in the press and music publishing sectors. (shrink)

Les fouilles de Délos effectuées au début du XXe siècle ont mis au jour une trentaine de blocs provenant de pressoirs. Certains d'entre eux appartenaient à des installations produisant des huiles alimentaire et lampante (cf. BCH 121 [1997], p. 573-615), d'autres sont probablement à relier à la fabrication des parfums mentionnée par Pline. Deux maies de pressoir ont été découvertes dans la Maison IB du Quartier du stade, fouillée en 1912 par A. Plassart et interprétée comme un restaurant à cause (...) de la découverte de quatre fourneaux. De nouvelles recherches conduites en 1997 ont montré la complexité de l'histoire de cette demeure qui, vers le début du Ier siècle av. J.-C, comporta une importante fabrique de parfums. Une salle fut alors équipée de deux presses à coins servant à extraire des huiles à parfum et de fourneaux où l'on faisait chauffer l'huile et les aromates. Au cours d'une phase ultérieure, la parfumerie fut démantelée et la demeure probablement convertie en établissement de bains. Les acquis de cette fouille et de celle de l'huilerie IIΙΟ du Quartier du théâtre permettent d'interpréter les blocs anciennement retrouvés et de mesurer la place respective de la production du vin, de l'huile alimentaire et des parfums dans l'île de Délos à l'époque hellénistique et durant l'Empire romain. (shrink)

Les observations des activités de jeux et de construction de jouets se concentrent sur l’âge préscolaire et primaire. Le début des activités ludiques des filles et garçons à l’extérieur de la maison, dans le domaine public, se situe vers l’âge de trois ans dans l’Anti-Atlas et en général au Maroc. Toutefois, l’on trouve des enfants plus petits dehors, lorsqu’ils sont pris en charge par des filles à l’âge de l’école primaire ou par des adolescentes, moins souvent par des garçons ou (...) adolescents : les observations concernent donc des filles de l’Anti-Atlas âgées de 2 à 8 ans, à quelques exceptions près, les jeux de faire semblant, les poupées et autres objets bricolés, et examinent l’impact des jouets industriels sur la fabrication de jouets par les enfants. (shrink)

The Manufacturing Techniques of Myrtos-Pyrgos Stone Vessels The Minoan site of Myrtos-Pyrgos has produced a wide range of Proto-and Neopalatial objects (faience, pottery, stone vessels, sealstones, etc.) that demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship and also the existence of an elite to consume them. Among the finds, the Protopalatial stone vessels show great skill in production and appear very similar to those of Quartier Mu at Malia. While the repertoire of forms is largely common to the two centres, study of (...) the techniques used reveals particularly close links — which may suggest a regional distribution of techniques in the Cretan workshops of the time. Among the later material, the presence of fragments of Egyptian vessels (and vessels of Egyptian stone) points to likely exchanges with Egypt. (shrink)

Si, comme le souligne Pierre-François Moreau dans la préface, le rapport de la philosophie spinoziste aux mathématiques est « fort visible », il n’est pas pour autant facile à interpréter. En effet, l’intérêt de Spinoza pour les mathématiques est manifeste dans la forme géométrique de l’Éthique, des Principes de la philosophie de Descartes, et du premier Appendice du Court Traité ; mais elles sont aussi présentes en tant que problèmes à traiter ou comme illustrations dans la correspondance et..

In this article, we present, assess and give reasons to reject the popular claim that shame is essentially social. We start by presenting several theses which the social claim has motivated in the philosophical literature. All of them, in their own way, regard shame as displaying a structure in which "others" play an essential role. We argue that while all these theses are true of some important families of shame episodes, none of them generalize so as to motivate the conclusion (...) that shame is an essentially social emotion. We consider each thesis in turn, explaining in the process their connections with one another as well as the constraints on a theory of shame they help uncover. Finally, we show how a non-social picture of shame is not only capable of meeting these constraints, but has the further virtue of shedding light on those situations in which others seem to play no role in why we feel shame. (shrink)

This paper explores substantive accounts of emotional phenomenology so as to see whether it sheds light on key features of emotions. To this end, we focus on four features that can be introduced by way of an example. Say Sam is angry at Maria’s nasty remark. The first feature relates to the fact that anger is a negative emotion, by contrast with positive emotions such as joy and admiration (valence). The second feature is how anger differs from other emotions such (...) as sadness, fear and joy (individuation). The third concerns the objects of anger and the sense in which anger discloses the significance of Maria’s remark to Sam (intentionality). Finally, there is anger’s relation to behaviour (motivation). Does focussing on emotional phenomenology encourage specific accounts of these features? We shall see that there are reasons to think it does. Still, are these reasons of sufficient import to dispel the scepticism of those who think that nothing of consequence plays out at the personal level of emotional experience? Given the role of emotional experience in our evaluative practices, we shall conclude that they are. Our discussion is structured as follows: section 1 focuses on feeling approaches to phenomenology, section 2 on componential approaches, section 3 on perceptual approaches and section 4 on attitudinal approaches. Section 5 concludes with some observations regarding the significance of emotional phenomenology. (shrink)

In this paper, we clarify what proponents of the Growing Block Theory (GBT) should and what they should not say, and what they consistently can say. Once all the central tenets of the view are on the table, we address both David Braddon-Mitchell’s and Trenton Merricks’ recent eulogies for GBT, based on what is representative of a certain type of argument meant to show that GBT is internally incoherent. We argue that this type of argument proceeds from a mistaken assumption (...) about GBT’s core, viz. that GBT works with an untensed notion of what, in the metaphysically most fundamental sense, there is. We conclude that this type of argument accordingly misfires and that for all we know, we might be living on the brink of reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guillaume Budé, Andrea Alciato, Pierre de l’Estoile: Renaissance Interpreters of Roman LawMichael L. MonheitIn the Renaissance, jurists and other scholars intensely debated the problem of how to interpret correctly the Corpus iuris civilis (CIC), Justinian’s great sixth-century-ad compilation of Roman law. 1 Yet by the sixteenth century jurists had been closely interpreting its texts for four centuries; indeed Roman law jurists, much more than pre-Reformation theologians, innovated through (...) close commentary on the text (a characteristic sometimes wrongly considered a humanist innovation). Assuming that these texts were fully consistent, largely lacking a sense of historical distance, they “found” the CIC’s dictum on a given question by weaving many passages that seemed to address it partially into a complex logical fabric, and eliminated apparent internal conceptual disparities in the same way. 2But from the fifteenth century such humanists as Lorenzo Valla (1407–57) and Angelo Politiano (1454–94) applied humanist critical methods to the CIC and ridiculed the methods of the civilians. In the early sixteenth century the work of Guillaume Budé (1468–1540), Andrea Alciato (1492–1550), and Ulrich Zasius (1461–1535) intensified the crisis in legal interpretation. Budé, the [End Page 21] period’s leading French humanist, was the first humanist to publish an exhaustive study of Justinian’s Digest, while the Milanese jurist Alciato and the German jurist Zasius were among the first humanist-trained Roman lawyers to tackle the CIC. Across the century’s first three decades these humanists debated each other and other jurists, including the eminent Orléans professor of Roman law, Pierre de l’Estoile (1480–1537), best known to scholars as the teacher of a youthful law student named Jean Calvin. 3 We consider here a debate between Budé, Alciato, and Estoile, which also involved Nicolas Duchemin, Estoile’s student and partisan, and Calvin himself, who made his first appearance in print by contributing a preface to the work of his friend Duchemin. Though often referred to in Calvin scholarship, the debate has never been thoroughly explored. 4 [End Page 22]Unlike some recent studies of interpretation in the Renaissance, this study focuses on each interpreter’s practice, rather than his explicit methodological pronouncements alone, on what Wittgenstein calls a writer’s “language game”—here the meaning of each interpreter’s statements in the context of his interpretive practices. Indeed we shall view this debate as a clash of three “forms of life,” since the three protagonists could not agree as to what rules to follow to determine the meaning of a particular expression. 5In the passage in question, Lex Nec quicquam, §Ubi decretum, from the Digest section On the Duties of the Proconsul and Legate (D.1.16.9.1), the third century Imperial jurist Ulpian, declares:Ubi decretum necessarium est per libellum id expedire proconsul non poterit: Omnia enim quaecunque causae cognitionem desiderant per libellum non possunt expediri. (Where a decretum [decree] is required, the proconsul will not be able to dispose of the matter per libellum. All matters whatsoever requiring causae cognitio [judicial investigation] cannot be disposed of per libellum.)In unravelling the meaning of such key terms as decretum and libellus, the interpreters applied assumptions and practices rooted in both the humanist and [End Page 23] scholastic traditions—sometimes the same individual applied both. The debate presents the issue of interpretation apart from that of textual recovery, for no participant claimed any passage involved had been corrupted or offered a significant variant. Had they possessed the Mommsen edition of the CIC (albeit without necessarily understanding its principles of construction), each would have faced little added difficulty.I. Guillaume Budé on §Ubi decretumGuillaume Budé sparked the debate with his comments on the passage in the first part of his famous study of Justinian’s Digest, the Annotationes in quattuor & viginti Pandectarum libros (1508). He argued that the term libellus as used in the passage meant a supplicatory petition addressed to the Emperor. The matters involved could include both controversial cases, for which the Emperor would rely on the judgment of his council, and uncontested matters in which Emperors acted by their own “liberality or beneficence.” Budé confined himself to the... (shrink)

It is not the purpose of this article to evaluate the techno-scientific claims of the transhumanists. Instead, I question seriously the nature of the ethics and morals they claim can, or soon will, be manipulated artificially. I argue that while the possibility to manipulate human behavior via emotional processes exists, the question still remains concerning the content of morality. In other words, neural moral enhancement does not capture the fullness of human moral psychology, which includes moral capacity and moral content. (...) In this article, I revisit the debate between Hume and Kant concerning the role of emotions and reason in moral philosophy. I do so with reference to the work of philosopher Alasdair McIntyre. His moral philosophy has long stood as an essential text in virtue ethics, which constitutes the basis for my critique of the promise to engineer virtues (what I call “neural moral enhancement”). First, I outline three specific shifts that occurred in the history of Western moral philosophy in order to contextualize current debates on the nature of morality/moral agency. Second, I summarize MacIntyre's critique of contemporary moral philosophy and show its relevance to an assessment of neural moral enhancement. Finally I argue that moral neuroenhancement is a one-dimensional conceptualization of moral agency that does not reflect the fullness of human moral psychology. It envisions a world in which individual moral capacities will be enhanced and controlled but says nothing about the nature of the morality. (shrink)

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that an important part of our knowledge is acquired via testimony. One of the main objectives of social epistemology is therefore to specify the conditions under which a hearer is justified in accepting a proposition stated by a source. Non-reductionists, who think that testimony could be considered as an a priori source of knowledge, as well as reductionists, who think that another type of justification has to be added to testimony, share a common conception about children development. Non-reductionists (...) believe that infants and children are fundamentally gullible and their gullibility could be seen as an example for justifying testimony, while reductionists believe that this gullibility is merely an exception that should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to review contemporary literature in developmental psychology providing empirical grounds likely to clarify this philosophical debate. What emerges from current research is a more elaborated vision of children’s attitude toward testimony. Even at a very young age, children do not blindly swallow information coming from testimony; doubtful or contradictory information is automatically screened by their cognitive system. Even if they are unable to give positive reasons for the acceptance of a given testimony, young children are not gullible. Such empirical findings tend to call into question the radical opposition between reductionism and non-reductionism. (shrink)

I introduce a proof system for the logic of relative fundamentality, as well as a natural semantics with respect to which the system is both sound and complete. I then “modalise” the logic, and finally I discuss the properties of grounding given a suggested account of this notion in terms of necessity and relative fundamentality.

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

I compare the semantic approach to the logic of worldly grounding put forward in my “Grounding and Truth-Functions” (2010) with the approach developed by Fine in “Guide to Ground” (2012a) and “The Pure Logic of Ground” (2012b). I argue that both are defective in some respects, and offer an alternative approach in the same spirit but based on a new semantic framework, which combines the best aspects of the frameworks within which the previous approaches were developed.

SUMMARYThe essay argues that Jeremy Bentham played a major role in the transitional process between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries leading to the ‘discovery' or ‘invention of society' as an order, i.e., as an autonomous object of knowledge. By comparing Bentham's discourse with those developed by select protagonists of that transition, particularly Ferguson, Sieyès, and Mirabeau, it is shown how society emerges as the logical and historical space of a set of relationships that affects both the rationalisation and the (...) practice of government. In contrast with Michel Foucault's interpretation of Bentham's role in the genealogy of neoliberalism, recently developed by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, this paper suggests that ‘the new governmental reason’ rose from within the discourse of law. Consequently, the problem of ‘constitution’ was not left behind by the epistemological change of the eighteenth century, as they argue. Rather, the scientific and political understanding of society as a code became the base for an innovative conception of both law and politics. (shrink)

This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order. -/- The authors devise (...) axiomatizations of GBT and its competitors which, against the backdrop of a shared quantified tense logic, significantly improves the prospects of their comparative assessment. Importantly, neither of these axiomatizations involves commitment to properties of presentness, pastness or futurity. The authors proceed to address, and defuse, a number of objections that have been marshaled against GBT, including the so-called epistemic objection according to which the theory invites skepticism about our temporal location. The challenge posed by relativistic physics is met head-on, by replacing claims about temporal variation by claims about variation across spacetime. -/- The book aims to achieve the greatest possible rigor. The background logic is set out in detail, as are the principles governing the notions of precedence and temporal location. The authors likewise devise a novel spacetime logic suited for the articulation, and comparative assessment, of relativistic theories of time. The book comes with three technical appendices which include soundness and completeness proofs for the systems corresponding to GBT and its competitors, in both their pre-relativistic and relativistic forms. -/- The book is primarily directed at researchers and graduate students working on the philosophy of time or temporal logic, but is of interest to metaphysicians and philosophical logicians more generally. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss the distinction between essential and accidental properties from a contemporary perspective. I first distinguish between the modal notion and the Aristotelian notion of essence. I present various ways of cashing out the modal notion, and then I turn to the Aristotelian notion, which has been at the centre of metaphysical enquiry over the past thirty years or so. I present and discuss simple modal accounts of that notion, then sophisticated accounts and finally non-modal accounts. In (...) the very last part of the chapter, I briefly go through various topics: individual essences; the question of what is essential to what; the use of essence in the characterisation of other notions; so-called generic essence and other generalizations of the standard, objectual notion of essence; and finally, scepticism and anti-realism about essence. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage constitue un contraste épistémologique entre différentes reconstructions rationnelles et pose le problème des fondements de la rationalité scientifique. A partir de la pensée du philosophe des mathématiques et des sciences hongrois Imré Lakatos, il vise à démontrer que la science est formulée par des principes rationnels et logiques. La vérifiabilité selon le Cercle de Vienne et la falifabilité d'après Popper en constituent des exemples typiquement justifiables pour distinguer la science de la pseudoscience et rejeter les croyances envisagées par (...) l'épistémologie de la découverte soutenue par Thomas Kuhn et Polanyi. La critique interprétative que Lakatos construit contre le poppérisme et/ou le falsificationnisme amplifie méthodologiquement le sens de la rationalité, en ce sens que Lakatos en arrive systématiquement à implémenter l'intelligence de falsifier le falsificationnisme poppérien. La compréhension d'une telle épistémologie de l'interprétation amène à constater que la structuration " méthodologique a des programmes de recherche est composée des voies heuristiques à éviter et à suivre. Ainsi, l'heuristique négative caractérisant le noyau dur du programme en constitue une réduction et fermeture méthodologique, tandis que le glacis protecteur et l'heuristique positive ouvrent et amplifient la recherche scientifique. Aussi, une étude historiographique des programmes est ici envisagée comme l'attestation de la jointure épistémologique de l'histoire et de la philosophie des sciences. (shrink)

Les résultats de l'étude du mur de Conon sur l'Akté, au Pirée, et de l'examen de ses différentes phases architecturales ont été étendus aux projectiles en pierre d'époque hellénistique recueillis en différents points des fortifications du Pirée. On fait des observations nouvelles sur la poliorcétique antique et plus particulièrement sur la fabrication de projectiles en pierre, taillés dans des colonnettes que l'assaillant ramassait dans les cimetières à l'extérieur des murs. Pour tenter une chronologie plus précise des boulets, on (...) a étudié leur poids du point de vue de la métrologie et avancé des hypothèses sur l'utilisation de la mine et de la livre dans les machines de guerre. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, society's wealthiest members have claimed an ever-expanding share of income and property. It has been a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon--the end of the age of growing equality launched by the American and French revolutions. And just as significant as the social and economic factors driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself. An ambitious transatlantic history of the struggles that, for two centuries, put political and economic equality (...) at their heart, The Society of Equals calls for a new philosophy of social relations to reenergize egalitarian politics. For eighteenth-century revolutionaries, equality meant understanding human beings as fundamentally alike and then creating universal political and economic rights. Rosanvallon sees the roots of today's crisis in the period 1830-1900, when industrialized capitalism threatened to quash these aspirations. By the early twentieth century, progressive forces had begun to rectify some imbalances of the Gilded Age, and the modern welfare state gradually emerged from Depression-era reforms. But new economic shocks in the 1970s began a slide toward inequality that has only gained momentum in the decades since. There is no returning to the days of the redistributive welfare state, Rosanvallon says. Rather than resort to outdated notions of social solidarity, we must instead revitalize the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that more accurately reflect today's realities. (shrink)

Written with verve and intensity (and a good bit of wordplay), this is the long-awaited study of Flaubert and the modern literary field that constitutes the ...

Over the past four decades, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be the most influential sociologist in the world and a thinker on a par with Foucault and Le;vi-Strauss—a public intellectual as important to his generation as Sartre was to his. Sketch for a Self-Analysis is the ultimate outcome of Bourdieu’s lifelong preoccupation with reflexivity. Vehemently not (...) an autobiography, this unique book is instead an application of Bourdieu’s theories to his own life and intellectual trajectory; along the way it offers compelling and intimate insights into the most important French intellectuals of the time—including Foucault, Sartre, Aron, Althusser, and de Beauvoir—as well as Bourdieu’s own formative experiences at boarding school and his moral outrage at the colonial war in Algeria. (shrink)

La fin du marxisme en tant qu'"horizon de notre temps" a ouvert une période souvent appelée "post-moderne". Elle couvre approximativement les années 1970 à 2000 et se caractérise par la déconstruction. On observe ensuite un attrait renouvelé de la synthèse, pour diverses raisons : l'expérience totalitaire n'est plus aussi centrale, pour les nouvelles générations ; la multiplication des approches et la déconstruction généralisée a aussi fait perdre le sens global de notre époque, débouchant sur ce que certains auteurs appellent le (...) parcellitarisme ; l'émergence des anciens pays en développement sur la scène internationale apporte un regard neuf et partiellement extérieur à l'Occident, mettant en lumière ce que cette zone culturelle a de particulier et mettant à mal l'universalisme revendiqué. Cet ouvrage entend contribuer à l'effort et tenter un bilan synthétique et dialectique de la question de l'émancipation, à l'époque de la mondialisation et de la crise écologique. Il procède en trois étapes : un bilan du libéralisme, dans sa critique du conservatisme (thèse) ; un bilan des marxismes et post-marxismes, dans leur critique du libéralisme (antithèse) ; et une troisième partie de synthèse, se situant dans le prolongement théorique d'un ouvrage précédent sur l'écologisme, où l'auteur propose de réarticuler des concepts tels qu'autorité, religion, politique, science, culture et sacré, afin d'éclairer d'un jour nouveau la question de l'émancipation. La conclusion rejoint Gramsci et d'autres pour qui l'émancipation réside dans le fait d'agir en vérité. Cette affirmation apparemment simple se fonde sur un concept cosmologique de vérité élaboré principalement sur la base des travaux de Laclau, Sartre et de Whitehead. Il ouvre des pistes pour penser l'articulation de l'un et du multiple, dans une perspective résolument non relativiste."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are—as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree—widely thought to be intimately related: grounding and essence. Yet how, exactly, the two are related remains opaque. We develop a unified and uniform account of grounding and essence, one which understands them both in terms of a generalized notion of identity examined in recent work by Fabrice Correia, Cian Dorr, Agustín Rayo, and others. We argue that the account comports with antecedently (...) plausible principles governing grounding, essence, and identity taken individually, and illuminates how the three interact. We also argue that the account compares favorably to an alternative unification of grounding and essence recently proposed by Kit Fine. (shrink)

Bien des difficultés que nous éprouvons à comprendre les oeuvres philosophiques des Anciens proviennent souvent du fait que nous commmettons en les interprétant un double anachronisme: nous croyons que, comme beaucoup d'oeuvres modernes, elles sont destinées à communiquer des informations concernant un contenu conceptuel donné et que nous pouvons aussi en tirer directement des renseignements clairs sur la pensée et la psychologie de leur auteur. Mais en fait, elles sont très souvent des exercices spirituels que l'auteur pratique lui-même et fait (...) pratiquer à son lecteur. Elles sont destinées à former les âmes. Elles ont une valeur psychagogique. (shrink)

According to the fitting attitude (FA) analysis of value concepts, to conceive of an object as having a given value is to conceive of it as being such that a certain evaluative attitude taken towards it would be fitting. Among the challenges that this analysis has to face, two are especially pressing. The first is a psychological challenge: the FA analysis must call upon attitudes that shed light on our value concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these concepts. The (...) second challenge is normative: the FA analysis must account for the fittingness of the relevant attitudes in terms of a kind of normativity intimately related to these attitudes, but again without presupposing the mastery of the relevant value concepts. In this paper, we show that real progress is possible if we pay close attention to the nature of the attitudes recruited by the analysis. More specifically, we claim that an FA analysis that appeals to emotions conceived as evaluative attitudes — as opposed to, for instance, evaluative judgements or evaluative perceptions — has the best prospects of meeting the two challenges and of putting the FA analysis on a strong footing. (shrink)

It is often claimed that emotions are linked to formal objects. But what are formal objects? What roles do they play? According to some philosophers, formal objects are axiological properties which individuate emotions, make them intelligible and give their correctness conditions. In this paper, I evaluate these claims in order to answer the above questions. I first give reasons to doubt the thesis that formal objects individuate emotions. Second, I distinguish different ways in which emotions are intelligible and argue that (...) philosophers are wrong in claiming that emotions only make sense when they are based on prior sources of axiological information. Third, I investigate how issues of intelligibility connect with the correctness conditions of emotions. I defend a theory according to which emotions do not respond to axiological information, but to non-axiological reasons. According to this theory, we can allocate fundamental roles to the formal objects of emotions while dispensing with the problematic features of other theories. (shrink)

Some of the most eminent and enduring philosophical questions concern matters of priority: what is prior to what? What 'grounds' what? Is, for instance, matter prior to mind? Recently, a vivid debate has arisen about how such questions have to be understood. Can the relevant notion or notions of priority be spelled out? And how do they relate to other metaphysical notions, such as modality, truth-making or essence? This volume of new essays, by leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, is the (...) first to address and investigate the metaphysical idea that certain facts are grounded in other facts. An introduction introduces and surveys the debate, examining its history as well as its central systematic aspects. The volume will be of wide interest to students and scholars of metaphysics. (shrink)

In 1628, Harvey published his blood circulation theory, which triggered questionings by Riolan and Descartes at several levels: metaphysical, physiological, anatomical, institutional. The blood controversy tackles various conceptions of life that refer to various metaphysical backgrounds (Aristotelician, Cartesian or Neoplatonic), several kinds of relationships between natural philosophy and theology (compatibility, strict distinction, a balance between the two), distinct representations of the human body (dynamic, mechanic, aesthetic). It illustrates a point in time when medicine reforms and reorganizes its epistemic style and (...) its rationality in order to explain the complexity of the body’s fabric. (shrink)

The connection between shame, guilt and morality is the topic of many recent debates. A broad tendency consists in attributing a higher moral status and a greater moral relevance to guilt, a claim motivated by arguments that tap into various areas of morality and moral psychology. The Pro-social Argument has it that guilt is, contrary to shame, morally good since it promotes pro-social behaviour. Three other arguments claim that only guilt has the requisite connection to central moral concepts: the Responsibility (...) Argument appeals to the ties between guilt and responsibility, the Autonomy Argument to the heteronomy of shame and the Social Argument to shame's link with reputation. In this paper, we scrutinize these arguments and argue that they cannot support the conclusion that they try to establish. We conclude that a narrow focus on particular criteria and a misconception of shame and guilt have obscured the important roles shame plays in our moral lives. (shrink)

In this chapter, we first introduce the idea that emotions are evaluations. Next, we explore two approaches attempting to account for this idea in terms of attitudes that are alleged to become emotional when taking evaluative contents. According to the first approach, emotions are evaluative judgments. According to the second, emotions are perceptual experiences of evaluative properties. We explain why this theory remains unsatisfactory insofar as it shares with the evaluative judgement theory the idea that emotions are evaluations in virtue (...) of their contents. We then outline an alternative � the attitudinal theory of emotions. It parts with current theorizing about the emotions in elucidating the fact that emotions are evaluations not in terms of what they represent, but in terms of the attitude subjects take towards what they represent. We explore what sorts of attitudes emotions are and claim that they are felt bodily attitudes. (shrink)

Vous avez peut-être lu l'Enfer de Dante mais jamais son Paradis : il équivaut à vos yeux à un néant immaculé. Or le paradis dantesque est bien plus différencié et violent que son enfer. Béatrice y déclare au poète : " Si tu voyais mon rire, tu serais réduit en cendres ". C'est pourquoi, au fond, vous mettez le paradis à la porte : vous redoutez l'exigence de sa joie. Et vous vous fabriquez à la place un petit paradis artificiel, (...) rassurant... qui fait un enfer très convenable. Certes, il ne s'agit pas de fuir vers un autre monde imaginaire, ni de régresser vers ce paradis terrestre dont la Genèse nous dit qu'il est définitivement perdu. A la notion d'un au-delà, vous opposez à bon droit la requête de vivre hic et nunc. Mais vous n'arrivez jamais à être vraiment ici, maintenant. C'est là que le vrai paradis révèle son paradoxe et se défend contre ses parodies : il n'est pas évasion vers un ailleurs, mais la grâce déchirante d'être présent à tous et à chacun, dans une ouverture symphonique, une créativité chorale. Ce livre vous invite à un itinéraire à travers la philosophie, la théologie et les arts - de Nietzsche à Bonnefoy de Baudelaire au Bernin, de Sade à Mozart - afin d'approcher ce que le paradis a de plus terrible et de plus beau : la béance de sa béatitude. Oh! il ne s'agit pas de vous consoler, non, mais de vous convoquer à cette joie qui doit vous faire perdre toute contenance - comme un clown - et détruire en vous tout contentement - comme un fleuve, lequel n'est lui-même que de se recevoir et de s'offrir sans fin... (shrink)

According to the fitting attitude (FA) analysis of value concepts, to conceive of an object as having a given value is to conceive of it as being such that a certain evaluative attitude taken towards it would be fitting. Among the challenges that this analysis has to face, two are especially pressing. The first is a psychological challenge: the FA analysis must call upon attitudes that shed light on our value concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these concepts. The (...) second challenge is normative: the FA analysis must account for the fittingness of the relevant attitudes in terms of a kind of normativity intimately related to these attitudes, but again without presupposing the mastery of the relevant value concepts. In this paper, we show that real progress is possible if we pay close attention to the nature of the attitudes recruited by the analysis. More specifically, we claim that an FA analysis that appeals to emotions conceived as evaluative attitudes — as opposed to, for instance, evaluative judgements or evaluative perceptions — has the best prospects of meeting the two challenges and of putting the FA analysis on a strong footing. (shrink)

The purpose of the book is to clarify the notion of existential dependence and cognate notions, such as supervenience and the notion of an internal relation. I defend the view that such notions are best understood in terms of the concept of metaphysical grounding, i.e. the concept of one fact obtaining in virtue of other facts, where ‘in virtue of’ has a distinctively metaphysical meaning.

L'enjeu de l'écologie n'est plus simplement d'actualité, il est urgent. Le climat change, les ressources s'épuisent, et plus le temps passe plus les sombres prédictions faites par le Club de Rome dans les années 1970 se vérifient. En conséquence, la question rencontre de plus en plus d'intérêt. Les thèses sont nombreuses, et à les lire, on ne peut se départir d'une impression de flou, voire d'éparpillement ou de contradiction. L'écologie politique est-elle progressiste? Est-elle réactionnaire? Est-elle libertaire ou autoritaire? S'agit-il d'une (...) nouvelle religion? S'agit-il du nouveau conflit central? En partant des questions clé qui ont orienté les débats autour de l'écologisme depuis son apparition dans les années 1960, Fabrice Flipo organise la discussion et relie les fils épars de l'analyse empirique et théorique. Il nous montre que l'écologie politique se définit non par la protection de l'environnement mais par une remise en cause de l'universalité du mode de vie moderne. L'écologisme est ainsi un mouvement d'emblée global, qui renverse les cadres établis de la politique. (shrink)